


Survivor's Guilt

by taqarat



Series: We Thought We Lost You.... Welcome Back [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Post TRK - pre epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 11:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14872724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taqarat/pseuds/taqarat
Summary: Four months after TRK.Ronan and Gansey remember Noah.





	Survivor's Guilt

 

“Scoot. Come on, Dick. Move.”

“Hmmm?” Gansey responded, ineloquently. Part of his brain had registered the sound of Ronan making his way down the stairs of the old farmhouse and into the living room but most of it was still tangled in his own thoughts.

 

“Fucking scoot over. Over - _er!_ Jesus.” Ronan was apparently not going to wait for his sluggish mind to catch up. It had to be 2 or 3 in the morning and Gansey had been fighting his insomnia by lounging on the couch and staring into the dream fire. Fighting wasn’t the right word. Catering to? Enduring? Indulging? He _was_ awake. His consciousness was just drifting on a sea of _what if’s_ and _if only’s_.

Living at the Barns was a completely different experience than living in Monmouth. That was no surprise to Gansey. He’d anticipated the change when Ronan had invited him to move out there a month or so back. But there were ways that the two homes were very similar. They both creaked and popped despite the relative stillness of the inhabitants. They both were as drafty as an old tree house. And both had the strange quality late at night that made them feel as if their occupants just might be the only ones left on earth.

Gansey stirred enough to shift over obligingly but then didn’t know why he bothered as Ronan just flopped down violently in the center of the couch and threw his legs over Gansey’s lap anyway. Ronan did sit up momentarily to pull the old quilt he’d brought in up to Gansey’s chest, which honestly made up for a lot. 

It reminded Gansey of their many shared sleepless nights at Monmouth in the past. On peaceful nights it had been Ronan listening to music through his headphones in his room while Gansey puttered away on his model, or jotted down thoughts and theories in his journal. On the bad nights it had been Ronan tearing off in his BMW with booze on his breath and a wild look in his eye, leaving Gansey to pace and worry and hate himself for not knowing how to save him. But there had been other nights, the in-between nights, when self destruction wasn’t required and neither was solitude. When Ronan would come out of his room and sprawl next to him on the floor and kick his foot until Gansey paid attention to him. Or nights when he’d invite him to go on a drive. Or nights when he’d flop down next to him on Gansey’s bed and steal his pillow from under his head and stare up into the dark. 

Those nights had been Gansey’s favorite. It usually meant that Ronan had something on his mind. Gansey had learned that Ronan didn’t want to necessarily talk about it and he certainly didn’t want Gansey to fix anything. But he did want to be next to someone who was thinking about the same thing he was. He’d throw out a fragment of a sentence so Gansey would know the subject. _“If I could just go back there for a day…”_ or _“That sonofabitch hits him…”_ or _“Seven fucking years.”_ And Gansey would hum his acknowledgment and they’d think on it side by side; a knee pushing against a thigh, an elbow jutting into a side, a forehead pressed into a shoulder. Until they drifted off or morning came or both.

So Gansey waited patiently for Ronan to fill him in on the subject for the night. When it didn’t happen for a long while, Gansey looked over at him. Ronan looked back with one raised brow. Oh. _Oh_. Ronan had joined him not to talk about what was on his own mind, but to see what was bothering Gansey. That was new. And nice. He _had_ been preoccupied lately but he hadn’t realized he’d been so obvious about it. 

He turned back to watch the fire and try to summarize his thoughts the way Ronan used to.

Finally he murmured, “his last words to me were, ‘Don’t throw it away’.” 

Ronan hummed and let his head fall back against the armrest and Gansey knew he was thinking about Noah too. He was also gratefully aware that Ronan knew him well enough to understand _everything_ he was feeling just from that one sentence. The survivors guilt for getting not one but two additional shots at life. How unfair it was that Noah didn’t get the same. The pressure to make it all _mean_ something, not just for himself but for Noah too. How that felt even harder to achieve without the quest. How incredibly lost he felt. Untethered. Adrift. Unmoored. How he had no idea how to go forward. How grateful he was to Ronan and Adam for inviting him to live with them at the Barns until he figured it all out. Or at least until he graduated from high school.

After a long while in the comfortable silence Gansey started to feel slightly more at peace. He had to admit that Ronan was on to something with this method of dealing with one’s issues. Gansey typically bottled things up, assuming everyone else’s problems were bigger than his own. Or he’d try to talk things out, at length and exhaustively, seeking fixes to unfixable problems. But there was something about this silent companionship. Of being understood without saying much at all. Of being made aware of just how well he was known. 

Gansey woke up alone. The fire was out, the sun was up, and the blanket he’d been sharing with Ronan was now pulled all the way up to his chin. He’d slept hard and was left with the disconcerting feeling of not knowing what day it was or how long he’d been asleep. He rubbed his eyes and stretched the kink out of his neck then noticed there was something on the couch where Ronan had been laying the night before. Gansey picked it up.

It was a book, similar in style to his abandoned Glendower journal. Remarkably similar. The size and weight, the color and softness of the leather. All of it was so spot on he guessed it had to be something from Ronan’s dreams. And when he opened it up his suspicions were confirmed.

Inside were pages and pages of photos of Noah. That in and of itself was an impossibility. Back in the fall, once the slow realization that Noah was gone for good had permeated the group, there’d been a concerted effort to find evidence of him. They’d all been afraid that Noah would slide out of their consciousness in the same way he’d slid in. That had made them all desperate for tangible ways to remember him. But he didn’t _own_ things, there were no traces of him in his old room at Monmouth. And while they had dozens of pictures of their adventures in the last year, to their horror they’d found that Noah didn’t show up in a single one of them.

So this book that Ronan had pulled from his dreams was an absolute miracle. Gansey thumbed through the pages and realized that they weren’t camera shots with Noah reinserted into them. These were snapshots straight from Ronan’s memory. Each one was incredibly real and directly from Ronan’s perspective.

It was this: Noah, Adam and Blue sitting on the floor in Monmouth, among Gansey’s boxes of artifacts. Noah smiling down at a baby Chainsaw cradled in his hands.

It was this: Gansey sitting among his model Henrietta, working on a building; Noah sprawled out on his back along main street, grinning up at the ceiling.

It was this: Noah and Gansey in the kitchen/bathroom at Monmouth. Gansey standing by the fridge with his arm defensively thrown over his eyes. Noah sitting on the counter with his head tipped back, laughing. (Gansey surmised it was one of the many times Ronan had endeavored to provoke Gansey’s prudishness by casually entering a room completely nude.)

It was this: Noah, leaning out Ronan’s window looking down at something that was most likely smashing on the asphalt below. His mouth shaped like an O, his eyes full of glee.

It was the booth at Nino’s, the pews at St. Agnes, the parking lot of Monmouth, the back of the Pig, the aisle of Dollar City, the clearing in Cabeswater.

In every one of them Noah was smiling or laughing. Every one. Which made Gansey smile too. It made the tight feeling around Gansey’s heart loosen just a little. He hadn’t been the one to kill Noah. Whelk had done that. And while Noah hadn’t gotten the second and third chance at life that Gansey had, he _had_ received another year, sharing these times with all of them. It wasn’t the same but it was something. Noah had been happy with them. 

Ronan had curated the pictures to show him that. 

Eventually, noises from the kitchen made their way down the hall and into Gansey’s consciousness. He closed the book and followed them, finding Adam alone, pouring coffee. He silently handed Gansey the steaming mug and poured another one for himself.

“New journal?” Adam asked once they’d both had a sip or two.

Gansey was still feeling a bit untethered so he just handed the book to Adam without explanation. Adam flipped through several pages before he looked up to Gansey with an expression of surprise. “Ronan?” he asked although it wasn’t really a question. There was no other explanation.

Gansey nodded.

Adam’s brow furrowed as he flipped through a few more. “Is he okay?” Adam asked and Gansey realized guiltily that that _was_ a real question. He couldn’t imagine what it had taken out of Ronan to produce this marvel. While Gansey slept, Ronan must’ve revisited dozens of experiences with Noah, relived them enough to be able to bring back these beautiful images.

“He was gone when I woke up,” said Gansey. “You didn’t see him?”

At that moment the back door crashed open and they both turned to see Opal coming in with a ferocious scowl on her face. “Kerah kicked me out of the barn I was playing in. He’s being an asshole.” She glared at them both with her arms crossed aggressively.  


“I’ll go talk to him,” Adam offered, sounding a bit worried.

Gansey watched Adam make his way toward the blue barn through the window over the sink. When he turned around Opal was sitting at the table with the photo book in front of her. Gansey barely refrained from snatching it away from her. She was known to gnaw on things she thought interesting and bury things in the yard she found offensive. But somehow she seemed to sense the importance of the book and touched it gently, almost reverently.

“Did you ever meet Noah?” he asked her. Gansey wracked his brain for a time when Noah and Opal would have been together. He seemed to remember a time when they were both in the BMW outside of Fox Way with a catatonic Ronan just after his mother had died. And they had both been there on that fateful day beside the road. Maybe? Noah wasn’t very Noah by the time Opal came along.

She nodded solemnly but then said, “No.”

“Would you like me to tell you about him?”

She nodded again.

Gansey pulled up the chair next to her and opened to the first picture. “Noah was a friend of ours. He was funny and sweet. He loved to play with Blue’s hair and do crazy stuff with Ronan. He’d help Adam scry and would stay up with me sometimes when I couldn’t sleep.” Gansey paused, a little frustrated. It seemed so inadequate. He turned to the next picture. “This was right after Ronan told us about his dreaming. He’d brought back this little plane and was showing us what it could do.” He paused to admire the image of Noah with his arm stretched high to hold the dream object. The sky was so blue, the tall grass so green. Noah’s smile as wide and open as the field they stood in.

Opal remained uncharacteristically silent and attentive as he turned to the next page. And the next. Gansey got lost in the stories, the memories. They flowed from him easily. His own voice a balm to all the fissures and cracks inside of himself.

As he turned to the last page Gansey looked up to find Adam in the back doorway, leaning against the jamb, watching him. Ronan was behind him, the only parts visible were his hands around Adam’s waist and the top of his head where he was resting his forehead on Adam’s shoulder.

“Don’t stop,” Ronan mumbled without looking up. 

Gansey hesitated only briefly then went back to describing the last few images. When he was done Opal stood. “Your mouth is good at stories,” she said in her funny little voice, then she slipped by Adam and Ronan to go outside.

Both Adam and Ronan straightened and took deep breaths. Ronan took Adam’s place leaning on the door jamb as Adam finished his coffee and grabbed his lunch sack off the counter. “My shift is over at four,” Adam said. “I’ll be back after that.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Gansey. _He’s hurting. You’ll help him get through today, right?_ the look said.

Gansey nodded and they bumped fists before Adam turned to Ronan for a goodbye kiss. Once he was gone, Gansey poured himself another cup of coffee and contemplated a way to thank Ronan for dreaming up that book. He opened his mouth to make some sort of attempt but was cut off by Ronan abruptly.

“Waffles?” he asked and Gansey nodded gratefully. He’d almost forgotten this part of the tradition. Ronan got the toaster waffles from the freezer and Gansey poured the orange juice. All throwbacks to their time at Monmouth and the very thing Gansey needed in that moment. 

They put on sweatshirts and settled on the back porch steps in the chilly morning sun. They ate their breakfast and watched Opal chase rabbits and bugs in the field. After a while Ronan turned sideways on the step. He tilted his head back against the post, closed his eyes, and wedged his cold feet roughly under Gansey’s leg.

“He would’ve loved her,” Ronan murmured. Another subject to contemplate together.

Gansey made a small noise of agreement and shifted his gaze back out to Opal. She squealed and laughed as she ran and it wasn’t hard at all to imagine Noah out there with her. 

_Don’t throw it away._ Gansey still wasn’t sure exactly how to go about following Noah’s advice. But in that moment, sitting with Ronan on the porch seemed like a pretty good first step.


End file.
